


Goodnight, Sweet Prince

by karmascars



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Cold Oak, Gen, Wincest if you squint, and it's a drabble so, angst ahoy, holy shit i wrote a gen fic, well it had to happen someday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2019-01-31 20:48:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12689967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karmascars/pseuds/karmascars
Summary: Dean always says goodnight to Sammy, even when Sammy can't hear him.





	Goodnight, Sweet Prince

Dean always says goodnight to Sammy, even when Sammy can't hear him. Asleep already, fled to Stanford; it doesn't matter. Dean will say those two little words and he'll mean them with all his heart. 

_ Good night, good dreams; good life, it seems. _

The first time Dean can’t say it, he chokes on it. 

It's not that he doesn't  _ want _ to say it. Not that he feels differently. But he thinks that now, he might understand if someone told him Horatio never said the phrase again after Hamlet died in his arms.

Frigid mud, colder than anything still unfrozen had a right to be, seeping through at knees and ankles. The scents of home skewed by damp and the sharp, metallic tang of blood. Wetness on his fingers where there shouldn't be. 

He ain't heavy, he's my— _ He ain't supposed to be this heavy. _

Staring through Sam's empty shell on the cot, choking on the cabin’s twin cloying scents of wood rot and grief, Dean swallows down three evenings’ worth of unsaid goodnights.  _ It's been three days since Cold Oak, _ some distant part of his brain informs him, like a cabin announcement if the Hindenburg were a modern airliner burning in slow motion.

Sometimes, when Dean stops in the doorway mid-pace and gazes down at his entire life lying there motionless, he can't think. Nothing in his head but static. 

And a voice he can't quite place, screaming. 

He'll try to say his brother's name. The syllables get choked up and twisted, the sound strained, cracked, strung out into a hoarse, inhuman whine. There's a sibilant, then a cry. 

He'll try to beg the heavens, that ineffable dome they say does miracles. He'll twist his face into grimaces like he's howling. Completely silent. He's punched enough holes in the wall that the plaster no longer resembles flat planes, but honeycomb. Where there was wood, there is dust.

He'll try to say the phrase. Such an innocent habit. One that rises like bile, stings like betrayal, and simmers low in his gut like blame.

Six days. For six nights in a row, he just can't say it. 

On the seventh, it's a whisper.

Dean is full of hope like sugary helium. Got an idea burning under his seat, something he knows will work, and it's like he's over-caffeinated. Jittery.  _ On.  _

“Goodnight, Sammy,” slips back in between the shovel on Dean's shoulder and the door. Habit. But it finally feels right again. If this plan works, Sam will be around tomorrow night to hear it, and it'll be like Dean never stopped saying it at all.

He can live with that… For as long as they give him. 

_ Good life, it seems. _


End file.
